


Halt and Catch Fire

by portmanteau_press



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alpha Sherlock, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Beta John, Come Marking, In Medias Res, M/M, Mating Cycles/Alpha Rut, Mildly Dubious Consent, Omega Verse, Possessive Behavior, Possibly Unrequited Love, Series 3 Compliant (to a point), Sherlock is horny and miserable
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-09
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-02-12 10:39:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2106630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portmanteau_press/pseuds/portmanteau_press
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are times now, at his lowest, most desperate moments, when Sherlock thinks it really would have been better if John had just gone ahead and died in that bloody bonfire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Omegaverse is my guiltiest of guilty pleasures. Enjoy.

Dr. Samuel J. Wainwright is forty-seven years old, balding, and a beta. His mother is Scottish, he is married to an omega of indeterminate gender, and he has three children, the oldest of which will enter university next year and the youngest of which plays bass clarinet and is allergic to shellfish. He is claustrophobic, is afraid of bats and spiders, and likes to holiday in Kent. He suffers sciatica from a herniated disc caused by an automobile accident four years ago; these days, he prefers the Tube to taxis. He has been abroad only once, to Copenhagen, and then briefly to Malmö. He has been practicing medicine for nineteen years.  
  
Sherlock Holmes ascertains all this information about his doctor within seconds of entering his office, but now, sitting atop the patient table with his long legs dangling off the sides as Dr. Wainwright observes him from a chair a few feet away, he finds, unfortunately, that none of it is helpful. There is a cotton swab taped tightly to Sherlock's inner elbow, where twenty minutes ago a nurse drew a vial of his blood for hormone testing. Sherlock stares at the bandage, flexes his arm slightly and feels the tape pull his skin. Dr. Wainwright is holding a clipboard with the preliminary lab results. _Facts and figures,_ Sherlock thinks. _Proof._ He tugs down the sleeve of his shirt.  
  
Dr. Wainwright smiles. "Well, Mr. Holmes," he says, perfectly congenially, as though they are two friends just sat down to lunch—as though he has not, in fact, been observing Sherlock for the last minute and a half, carefully assessing his behavior for signs of alpha rut. _Hostility, irritability, inability to sit still for prolonged periods of time,_ Sherlock's brain supplies unbidden, and in the same moment he realizes he's been kicking the backs of his heels against the base of the table since sitting down. Flustered, he forces himself to stop, and immediately feels the urge to stand up, pace the room, go outside. He doesn't. Dr. Wainwright scribbles something on the clipboard.  
  
"Well, Mr. Holmes," he says again, slipping his pen back behind his ear, and Sherlock's eyes snap to his, annoyed. He doesn't like people who repeat themselves.  
  
"Well _what?"_  
  
"Well, thank you for coming in," says Dr. Wainwright simply, still smiling. "I understand this is a bit of a leap of faith for you." Sherlock huffs and crosses his arms. Unperturbed, Dr. Wainwright begins leafing through the papers on the clipboard. "When I spoke to your brother he explained you have a certain disinclination to seek out attention for issues concerning your dynamic," he says. "And I really can't help but agree; your medical records on the subject are awfully sparse—"  
  
"My brother's an idiot," hisses Sherlock. Dr. Wainwright glances up.  
  
"So you disagree with him?" he asks, raising a brow. "Because he seems to believe you've begun a rut."  
  
_"My brother is an idiot,"_ Sherlock says again, more fiercely. He grips the edge of the table and leans forward in an attempt to menace, but Dr. Wainwright only shifts a little in his seat and crosses his legs, glancing at his charts just briefly enough to jot something more down. To Sherlock's chagrin, he seems completely at ease, and not at all intimidated.  
  
"Why don't you explain to me why you're here, then," he says casually, and Sherlock scowls. What a stupid thing for a doctor to ask. They've done the test, they have the results—the only thing making Sherlock jump through hoops now will do is waste time.  _Infuriating,_ Sherlock thinks. _This appointment is infuriating. Mycroft is infuriating. Everything is infuriating—_  
  
"You're angry," Dr. Wainwright observes. Sherlock blinks at him, stunned, then bares his teeth and leaps from the table.  
  
"Of course I am!" he shouts.  
  
"Why?"  
  
Sherlock spins on his heel. _"Why do you think?!"_  
  
Dr. Wainwright doesn't flinch. "I could hazard a guess," he says calmly. "But I'd rather you tell me."  
  
Sherlock balks. His mouth falls open, ready to answer, but whatever seemed obvious and justifiable about his fury just moments before has twisted now, become incomprehensible. For a brief second it seems to Sherlock like a forgotten word resting on the tip of his tongue, but by the next, it's gone. He shakes his head, lost.  
  
"I...don't know."  
  
Dr. Wainwright nods. "Mood swings and acute bouts of aggression are very common during the early stages of rut, Mr. Holmes," he explains, and Sherlock wilts back against the table, finding he needs to sit down again. "Is this the first time you've experienced an outburst like this?"  
  
Sherlock gapes. _Outburst_ —as though he's nothing but a bloody animal, as though he has no control at all! But then, like a pot boiling over, memories spill from the dark corners of his mind, of shouts and shoving, of broken champagne flutes, of Molly's horrified cry as she rushes to Tom, lying sprawled and bloodied on the floor—  
  
Sherlock shakes his head. He can feel the grey pallor in his cheeks, knows there's little point now in denying the obvious. The room fills with the soft scritches of Dr. Wainwright's writing.  
  
"Are you experiencing any other atypical symptoms?" he asks, setting the pen down.  
  
"I can't think anymore," Sherlock answers, covering his mouth with his hands.  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"Exactly what I said!" Sherlock barks, balling his hands and pounding his forehead with frustrated fists. "I can't concentrate on anything! I feel like my brain is tearing itself apart!" He thinks, but doesn't say, that he feels the way he felt when he was using—directionless, hollow, ravenous, raw.  
  
More scritches. "Any other changes?" Dr. Wainwright asks. Sherlock draws a breath, hesitates, then mumbles something low and inaudible. Dr. Wainwright looks up from his charts.  
  
"Pardon?"  
  
_"Other people,"_ Sherlock spits, louder. But he's talking to his shoes, and seems tentative to say anything more about it.  
  
Dr. Wainwright's eyes soften. "Do other people upset you?" he offers gently.  
  
The question seems to strike at the heart of something; Sherlock leans his face into his hands and makes a broken, languorous noise. "They're _insufferable_ ," he moans.  
  
"What is it about them that you find insufferable?"  
  
Sherlock thinks a moment before answering. "Their scents have changed," he explains slowly, and then stops, flushed and uncomfortable with what he's saying. But Dr. Wainwright says nothing, just waits patiently for elaboration, until Sherlock feels forced to add, quickly: "They're stronger than usual. More...potent."  
  
Dr. Wainwright nods. "I see. And those scents—how would you say they affect you? How do they make you feel?"  
  
Sherlock groans, raking his hands through his hair. Even at his very best, his most articulate, he's always been rubbish at feelings. "Belligerent," he finally says.  
  
"Is that all?"  
  
_"No."_  
  
"How else, then?"  
  
"...Defensive."  
  
"Territorial?"  
  
Sherlock cringes.  
  
"Mr. Holmes?"  
  
"I don't know!" Sherlock hisses, feeling suddenly too hot and unbearably foolish. He's having a hard time looking Dr. Wainwright in the face now, has riveted his eyes to a blank spot on the far wall. "How should I know?"  
  
"Well, scenting is a normal part of daily social life, for one," says Dr. Wainwright. "And alphas usually experience increased sensitivity to the scents they encounter during the course of their ruts." He speaks plainly, but Sherlock understands he's merely circling around the real question at hand, and the knowledge that this dull beta doctor is attempting to _gentle_ him makes him furious and ashamed.  
  
"Do you want to know if they _arouse_ me?" he seethes, twisting his face in spite.   
  
Dr. Wainwright gives him a pointed look. "Well, do they?"  
  
Sherlock bristles, unable to answer.  
            
"It's a perfectly natural reaction, Mr. Holmes," Dr. Wainwright assures him. "Most alphas—"  
  
"I am not _most alphas!"_ Sherlock snaps, growling in warning, and for a brief moment instinct overcomes training and experience and Dr. Wainwright clamps his mouth shut, subdued. Sherlock feels a momentary swell of victory—he's never made a stranger do something so blatantly submissive before. But then the doctor clears his throat softly and his eyes make a furtive look in a very obvious direction, and when Sherlock follows his gaze down he finds, to his confusion and immeasurable horror, a very conspicuous bulge in his trousers. Disgusted, he throws himself off the table.

"Mr. Holmes, please!" Dr. Wainwright calls out to him , and Sherlock pauses, his hand frozen just inches from the handle of the door. He can hear the doctor has risen from his chair, though to his credit he doesn't move closer, or try to touch him. "Please, it's quite all right," he says. "As I said, arousal is nothing to be ashamed of. It's not the first time something of the sort has happened in this office, I promise you."

Sherlock isn't certain why that's supposed to make him feel better in the slightest, but desperation has swallowed his resolve and so he wavers, inches a bit away from the door. "I apologize," he mumbles. His words sound clunky to his ears. "I didn't mean...I-I don't usually—oh _god."_ He drops his beet-red face into his hands.

"It's all fine, Mr. Holmes," Dr. Wainwright says again, slipping seamlessly back into his routine of perfectly accommodating and thoroughly beige professionalism. "Would you prefer I step out for a moment? It wouldn't be any trouble—"  
  
_"No!"_ Sherlock hastily interrupts. "I promise you, that will _not_ be necessary." In a show of compliance he backs further into the room, stepping awkwardly around what remains of his wilting erection. He has to readjust himself to sit back down, but thankfully Dr. Wainwright keeps his gaze averted, and makes a show of busying himself with his notes.

"Perhaps we should discuss something simpler for now," he says good-naturedly, once Sherlock has settled. Sherlock thinks he'd much prefer to die instead; the sympathy in Dr. Wainwright's voice is sickening. But what can he do? He nods.  
  
"Can you think of a point when you first started noticing your symptoms?” the doctor asks.

Sherlock swallows. “Fifteen days ago."

Dr. Wainwright hums, sounding mildly surprised. “That’s awfully specific,” he says. "Alphas without omega partners usually have difficulty pinpointing the onset of their ruts with such accuracy."

Sherlock fidgets, chewing the inside of his lip. "There was a fire," he mutters, glancing at Dr. Wainwright and then quickly away.  
  
The doctor cocks his head to the side. "A fire?"  
  
Sherlock sighs. He wishes he didn't have to explain further—there had, after all, been a brief mention of the incident alongside his name in the papers the following day, and a police report filed with the Met. It's rather humiliating to have to reiterate it all again, he thinks, especially like this, given the context. But then Dr. Wainwright prompts again, "A fire, Mr. Holmes?", and Sherlock finds he has no choice but to grind out an answer.  
  
“My friend was kidnapped,” he explains. "He was trapped, and then there was a fire...and he nearly burned to death in it."

Dr. Wainwright's eyes go wide. "Goodness me," he whispers.

"It was attempted murder," Sherlock says, preemptively answering the question he knows the doctor is too polite to ask, but his mouth turns dry at the word. For a moment he wrestles with his memories again, tries not to think about the details of that night, but they overwhelm him once more, and immediately his mind is consumed with petrol fumes and screams of panic, smoke and orange licking flames and a terrible, searing heat—hot enough, he would realize later, to rive leather and blister skin. With vicious clarity he remembers the latticework of logs and branches and his desperation in trying to pull them away, his body reeling in fear, and around him, all around him, the _flames,_ jumping and growing and climbing ever higher and _dear god, there isn't enough time_ —

Sherlock knocks his fists against his skull. "Stop it," he hisses, tugging at his hair. "He's safe now. I found him. He's safe now. _He's safe now."_  Strangely enough, Sherlock finds saying it aloud gives him a bizarre sense of comfort, manages to allay the thundering of his heart in his chest. In his periphery, though, he can feel the weight of Dr. Wainwright's stare, and realizes there is sweat at beading at his temples; distractedly, he wipes it away.

"You saved his life," Dr. Wainwright says to him.  
  
Sherlock's shoulders heave and fall; he feels, oddly, proud of his accomplishment and at the same time completely devastated by it. "If I'd been even a few seconds later, he would have died,” he admits.  
  
Dr. Wainwright nods in sympathy. "So, this is the event you believe triggered your rut,” he says.

“Yes.”

For a moment, Dr. Wainwright regards his charts with a sad, thoughtful expression. “This friend," he says at last, turning back up to Sherlock. "Is he a person you’re very close with?”

Sherlock shifts. “We used to be closer," he says. "We used to live together.”

“Did you share a sexual relationship?”

Sherlock blinks. Pales. Almost imperceptibly, his fingers tighten where they've come to rest at the edge of the table. “No.”

“Did you ever want to?”

Suddenly, Sherlock wants nothing more than to crawl out of his own skin. His heart has begun to hammer again. “Y-you can't be serious," he stammers. "This isn't possible!"

Dr. Wainwright resets his pen behind his ear. “Actually, Mr. Holmes," he says, "what you’re describing is perfectly normal. Ruts are often triggered by situations of intense stress or extreme emotion, near death experiences or any one of a variety of traumas. Omegas experience a similar phenomenon with their heats. It’s all very common.”

“He’s a _beta,”_ splutters Sherlock.

“Ruts can be triggered by people of any gender and dynamic, if the emotional bond between the two is strong enough," says Dr. Wainwright, in what Sherlock recognizes as a mildly patronizing tone. "I’ll admit, the omega-alpha relationship holds a certain historical significance, and it's certainly been fetishized by popular culture, but it is by no means the only viable biological combination. For example, I’m a beta, and my wife is an omega, and we’ve—”

“Been together twenty-two years and have three lovely children and you’re all very happy, yes, I know,” snaps Sherlock, springing from the table once again to pace the tiny room. “I do manage to get out of the house from time to time, _doctor._ I know how relationships work.” Dr. Wainwright slumps a bit in his seat, shocked, before a smile slowly breaks open upon his face.

“Well, I see it’s true what the papers say about you after all,” he says, following Sherlock's movements with his eyes. “Look, Mr. Holmes. This friend. Have you discussed your current situation with him? Does he know you’re in rut?”

Sherlock draws to a halt, takes a very measured breath. “Yes.”

“Does he know why?”

“No.”

“I think you should consider sharing that information with him.”

Sherlock shakes his head, aghast. “That’s impossible,” he breathes.

Dr. Wainwright sighs. “Mr. Holmes—”

"You don't understand!" hisses Sherlock. "I can't tell him!"

"Why ever not?"  
  
Sherlock spits the words like daggers, like shards of glass. "Because he’s _engaged,_ _"_ he says. "And not to me."


	2. II

Sherlock can smell fire.

The scent is in his nose, in his eyes, in the pores of his skin. With every footstep he runs he draws nearer to the source, a gigantic bonfire heaving great plumes of black smoke, and that smoke is in his lungs now, too, his eyes, his mouth, and he is furious and he is afraid. 

The blaze catches and grows. As it dawns on the crowd what is happening, they begin to scream.

Sherlock runs.

In his path a woman stands motionless, dumbstruck, a hand covering her mouth in shock. Sherlock knocks her aside, ignores her horrified blur of a face and the sound she makes as she hits the ground, and continues to tear across the park lawn. Ahead, more people crowd his way; he shouts, and they hastily clear a path. There are cries for help and panicked sounds from every direction, and at the last moment someone attempts to grab his arm and stop his advance. Sherlock twists out of reach and continues to run.

A second later he collides with the fire. 

The logs are immediately scalding, even through his gloves, but Sherlock doesn’t care and doesn’t slow in tearing them down. He forces his brain to store the pain away, deal with it later. The pain doesn’t matter. John matters. John is trapped. And Sherlock has to hurry or John is going to die—

“John!” Sherlock screams, beginning to feel panic eroding the veneer of his focus. He is rewarded with a mouthful of hot ash; he gags, then pulls down a burning log nearly twice the diameter of his arm only to dislodge a flurry of embers that sear his face with pinpricks of heat. His eyes are watering; there is a good chance his hair is on fire. Sherlock doesn’t care. He  _can’t_  care. John is the only thing he cares about, the only thing, in that moment, that matters. “John!”he screams again.  _“John!”_

There is no response, and for an awful second Sherlock is terrified that he is too late. That there is nothing left of his friend beneath the flaming timbers but a corpse. But then he hears, beneath the roar of the fire, a low groan that is unmistakably, undeniably  _John._ Sherlock swivels towards the noise, shouting John’s name again, and at last finds what he is seeking—a movement amidst the conflagration—a body caught beneath the web of fire.

Sherlock has no time to think; in a single fluid movement he plunges his hands through the flames into the fabric of John’s coat collar and pulls John free. Burning logs begin to collapse into the furnace-like void left by John’s body, but when he has enough leverage Sherlock manages to thread an arm around John’s chest and with a final heave propel them from the blaze.

They hit the ground hard a few feet away and collapse together, coughing. Instinctively, Sherlock twines his fingers into the folds of John’s clothing and clutches him tightly to himself. 

“John,” he rasps, sucking down lungfuls of John’s scent, reeling with adrenaline and with the heady realization that John is breathing, moving,  _living_ in his arms, when just moments before he had been so close to death.

Against him, John continues to wheeze. “Sher…” he manages finally, the last syllable eaten up by a gasp, and Sherlock nods, smoothing a hand through John's hair, cradling the back of his nape to press John’s face closer to his.

Sherlock is so preoccupied with holding on to John that he doesn’t realize at first the multitude of other hands on him. Most are attempting to shake him back to consciousness, others try to pat out the small flames still licking his clothes. Sherlock shuts his eyes to their advances and buries his nose deeper into John’s neck. The scent of John floods his senses. They are safe.

“Sir. Sir.  _SIR!”_

A hand jostles them, hard, and Sherlock's fragile sense of well-being is shattered. He snaps his eyes open and rears up, shielding John’s body from the crowd with his own. “Please, sir,” the voice pleads again, and Sherlock growls.

“Leave him alone!” he barks, shouting despite the fact that his voice is thin and strained by smoke. “Leave him be! He-he’s not—” Sherlock glances frantically down at John, lying unconscious now and listless in his arms, covered in soot, and feels a horrid tightness begin to constrict his throat. “For the love of god, John,” he moans, cupping John’s cheek in his hand. “John, listen to me, please, don’t do this, please,  _please—_ ”

 _“Sir!”_ Hands wind around Sherlock’s arms, pulling him and John apart.

“Get off me!” Sherlock screams, struggling madly. The chaos around him escalates immediately; there are voices shouting at him, trying to calm him, but Sherlock will have none of it, for in the very next second John is torn from his grip, and all Sherlock knows is that in this moment he must fight and fight and fight until he has John back. “Let him go!” he roars, panicked beyond all rational thought. “God dammit,  _let him go!_ Give him back! HE’S _MINE!”_

An exasperated young man crouches in front of Sherlock then, blocking John from view. He is an omega, Sherlock can smell, and a paramedic, one of the many now attempting to restrain him. “Sir, you need to calm down!” he says firmly, speaking directly into Sherlock’s face. “Please sir, your beta needs medical attention. I promise you we’ll do everything for him we can, but you must let us work!”

All the fight drains from Sherlock in an instant.  _“My_ beta..?” he repeats, stunned, and does nothing to keep his restrainers from finally manhandling him away from John to make room for the team of paramedics waiting nearby. They descend upon John in a storm; there is a man ripping John’s scorched jacket from his chest, a woman pressing an oxygen mask to his face, but Sherlock can only blink and stare as the scene unfolds before him, feeling suddenly wholly detached from the world itself. “My beta?” he says again, a tight-chested whisper, and, when his rationality finally resurfaces and he manages to attach the meaning to the words, he whips his attention back to the paramedic addressing him and says again, completely horrified:  _“My_ beta?! What the hell are you talking about?!”

The paramedic’s mouth falls open slightly, and he pauses in his work, leaving the oxygen mask he’s holding for Sherlock hovering near Sherlock’s chin. “But you said…” he begins, and then knits his brow together, making a confused glance in John’s direction. “I'm sorry, sir, I thought—”

_“John!”_

Both Sherlock and the paramedic turn just in time to see Mary burst through the ring of onlookers. Frantic and panting, she stumbles into the patch of lawn surrounding the ambulances and rushes to where John—face still covered by the oxygen mask and now stripped from the waist up—is being transferred to a wheeled stretcher.

“Oh my god, John, oh my god,” Sherlock can hear her sobbing, just above the din of the scene and the ringing in his ears. A paramedic attempts to grab her by the arm and pull her away, but she bucks him off, wailing, “He’s my fiancé!  _He’s my fiancé!”_ The sound of her voice twists Sherlock’s stomach into knots.

“Sir?”

Sherlock blinks and finds the omega staring at him once more, now with an odd, carefully arranged expression. “I need you to breathe deeply through this, sir,” he says, pressing the oxygen mask to Sherlock’s face.

But Sherlock can’t keep his attention on anything but John. “Will he be all right?” he asks through the gas, even as the mask strap is slipped over the back of his head. He watches Mary hover as the paramedics begin the process of trundling John into the back of the nearest ambulance and attempts to raise himself up to observe. “Where are they taking him?”

“Please try not to speak, sir,” the omega answers, pushing Sherlock back down. “Don’t move. Just take deep breaths, as I told you.” Sherlock makes to scowl, but his expression is quickly swallowed up by a grimace and then a cry of pain as another paramedic attending him begins to snip the burnt gloves from his hands. It’s excruciating, and he’s working on blinking back tears when Mary rushes up to him in a breathless whirl.

“Oh, Sherlock, thank you,” she says, gathering his head in her hands to plant a hasty kiss on his brow. “You dear man, thank you, you saved his life!”

“Stand back, ma’am!” the omega shouts angrily at her, but she’s already turned to leave, giving Sherlock an earnest look as she retreats back toward John’s ambulance.

“I’m going with him,” she explains as she goes. “I’ll call you once I know anything, I promise!”

Sherlock’s last sight of Mary’s face is an oval of mascara-streaked white caught amidst the chaos of the night. She receives a hand up into the back of John's ambulance, and no sooner have the doors shut than the sirens begin their caterwaul and the vehicle peals off the grass and into the street. 

Excitement over, the crowd begins to grudgingly disperse.

Sherlock feels sick. He feels as though he’s fallen into a freezing void, as though his chest has been torn open. Around him, the paramedics continue their work; in quick succession he is divested of his coat and jacket and his wristwatch is removed; a second later the sleeve of his shirt is sliced open to reveal his arm. “No painkillers,” he grunts automatically, when he realizes they’re preparing him for an IV drip. “I’m a recovering addict.” It’s the last thing he can manage before a wave of nausea overwhelms him, and he barely has time to tear the mask from his face before he pitches forward and vomits onto the ground between his legs.

Sherlock can feel the paramedics exchanging worried looks around him. He spits and tosses the mask aside, uncaring. He’s not certain he has the energy to care, now that the adrenaline has worn off and he’s shivering uncontrollably without his outer clothes. In his periphery he can see the lights of police cars congregating at the borders of the park. Sherlock hangs his head and groans; the last thing he wants to do at the moment is be questionedover why any of this has happened. John has nearly died tonight, and Sherlock is in pain, and like salt in the wound  _Mary_  has left with John in the ambulance, leaving Sherlock rendered helpless by injury and furious to the point of physical illness, and that in and of itself is so incomprehensible it’s appalling, and Sherlock has had enough. Absolutely, positively,  _enough._

The paramedics haul a stretcher from the back of the second ambulance still at the scene and set it down beside him. Sherlock stares at it. He has never in his life willingly gone to hospital, has never gone, in fact, unless either John or Mycroft or his mother demanded it. Tonight, though, he welcomes the opportunity to escape, and doesn’t resist as they usher him aboard. He's propped in a sitting position so he won’t aspirate; there’s talk now of a blood draw and someone shining a light in his eyes, and Sherlock realizes belatedly all the paramedics suspect he might be high.

“I’m not,” he mumbles hazily to the closest person carrying his stretcher as they levy him into the ambulance and close the doors.  _“Recovering_  addict. I said I’m a recovering—”

“Please try not to speak, sir,” a paramedic interrupts, shoving the oxygen mask back against Sherlock’s face, and Sherlock relents and gives up trying to convince them. As he watches them work, jostling a bit every so often as they round corners and weave through traffic, his eye falls upon the omega, who is sitting on his right now and tearing open disposable cold compresses from a supplies compartment on the floor. 

“I do apologize for the misunderstanding back there,” the omega says to Sherlock when he notices him staring. He looks distinctly uncomfortable, and speaks in a low, furtive voice to avoid drawing the attention of the others in the ambulance. “I shouldn’t have assumed—”

Sherlock jerks his head, cutting him off. “Forget it." 

“Right,” the omega answers swiftly, and though he turns his full attention back to his work there is an awful sympathy in his manner now even his exacting professionalism does only so much to disguise. Sherlock sees it, and can’t help but recall the way he’d fought mindlessly to keep hold of John’s body just minutes earlier, the way he’d screamed  _“MINE!”_ for the entire park to hear. His heart sinks.

When the omega finally takes the cool compresses and presses them against Sherlock’s hands, sending a torrent of pain barreling up his arms and into his skull and pressing out all room for thought, it’s almost a relief. 

 

∞

 

Four and a half hours later, Sherlock stands in front of his bathroom mirror staring at his naked reflection.

He looks the same, mostly. A little haggard, a little pale, a few locks of hair singed in a fashion that will take either a haircut or some clever styling to disguise. Along his right breast there is a bruising scrape he must have sustained while tearing through the bonfire. And then… 

Sherlock sighs, and stares down at his bandaged hands. First-degree burns on his left, second-degree burns on his right, and he was incredibly lucky to escape with so little, as the hospital nurses had seen fit to so emphatically remind him. His leather gloves, reduced now to a handful of tatters resting at the bottom of some hospital dustbin, had taken the brunt of the damage, it was discovered, and his heavy coat and scarf had shielded his remaining body from any other severe injury. He’d probably be hacking up phlegm and soot for the next few days, and the second-degree burns would certainly blister, but other than those minor inconveniences Sherlock had escaped the fire largely unscathed.

John had been luckier still. He’d inhaled a good deal of smoke and sustained some minor burns to his nose and mouth, but he’d make a full recovery in due time. Sherlock, holed up in A&E in a hospital halfway across the city from the one where John was located, had been numb with worry until Mary had called and given him John’s prognosis. In exchange, Sherlock—talking with his mobile on speaker while his hands were lathered in ointment and carefully bandaged by the hospital staff—told her to inform the police harassing her for details of the attack that John had been arranged by his kidnappers under, rather than amidst, the logs of the bonfire, the key factor in his surviving the blaze.  

And that's certainly something to think about, though Sherlock doubts he has the fortitude to tackle the mystery tonight. Tomorrow, he will get to work, read the police reports, badger Mycroft for the relevant CCTV footage. Tonight, though, he wants only to sleep.

To sleep, and to shower.

The nurses wouldn’t approve, Sherlock thinks, glancing down at his hands again, but he doesn’t much care. His body is covered in a film of ash and dried sweat and he feels rattled to the core by the night’s events; he wants more than anything to sleep, but he is  _not_  going to sleep filthy.

The scents of smoke and hospital disinfectant float upward in the mist around him when he steps into the spray. Sherlock lets it all wash away, sighing as the water begins to sluice down his back; the fewer reminders he has of this night, the better. In order to wash he’s removed the bandages from his left hand, and as he douses his hair beneath the showerhead he inspects it halfheartedly, staring at the red splotches along his fingers and palm. Seeing the physical damage to his body forces back the memory of the heat of the fire, searing through his gloves as he frantically searched the burning logs, and a small burst of adrenaline courses through him.

The sensation makes Sherlock slightly queasy, so he abandons the train of thought and focuses on getting clean. He works slowly, shampooing his hair and soaping himself down with gentle touches to avoid aggravating his burns while holding the bandages on his right hand away from the jets. But although the water is warm and its beat rhythmic on his skin, Sherlock finds he cannot relax. Again and again his thoughts return to the fire, to his feelings of panic, to the point at which, tearing through the logs, he’d believed John to be dead.

When Sherlock attempts to remind himself John is alive and well, things take a turn for the worse. Now, he can think of nothing but the weight of John in his arms, and how, even with the both of them still smoking from the fire, he’d fought and gnashed his teeth and refused to give John up, despite the part of him that had known John needed medical attention straight away. He’d made a fool of himself, Sherlock thinks, and yet, standing there in the shower, he can’t quite bring himself to regret his actions. John had needed Sherlock, and Sherlock had  _saved his life._ No one else in the park had been brave enough to rush the fire! Which meant that all those people watching, who had seen Sherlock shout and cling to John’s body like a maniac, had also seen him do something spectacular, something none of them could do.

 _He’d saved John’s life_.

John’s life.

 _His_ John.

Sherlock's breath catches, and he startles back to awareness. He’s been rubbing the bar of soap between his legs as he’s been thinking, and he and discovers, to his misery, that his thoughts of John have turned the perfunctory task into something obscene.

Sherlock drops the soap. He feels filthy all over again; he’s already half hard. Still, despite his better judgment, there is something in him that doesn’t want to stop. The drama of the night has only brought into sharper relief his attraction to John—the unrequited, underlying longing that has formed the background radiation of his life for the past five years—and his body is now thrumming with the warm, heady energy for which there is only one resolution.  

Sherlock considers, and decides he can’t bear to indulge himself. He has too many times in the past already, and reacting this way tonight considering the nature of John’s kidnapping feels particularly offensive. Ignoring his erection, he turns the temperature of the water as cold as he can stand and resolutely rinses the last of the soap from his body. When it's gone, his arousal has gone as well, and he shuts the water off and climbs out of the shower, barely bothering to towel off before tumbling naked into bed. 

 

∞

 

Sherlock runs.

He is searching again, for John, but unlike earlier the nature of this searching is not frenzied or panicked, but predatory. The bonfire looms before him, a glowing wreath of flame, but it has been stripped of its danger, transformed from a hazard into a bright beacon of passion. When Sherlock pulls John from the logs and the crowd gathers about them again, he finds that they have changed as well, are no longer an irritating obstacle but a titillation—an audience to witness his conquest.

In Sherlock's arms, John’s wordless movements telegraph compliance, written in the way he arches his back and falls open under Sherlock’s touch like the soft petals of a flower pried apart by a loving hand. There is a long, low whimpering noise made between them, and Sherlock begins to rock into John's body, ghosting his lips along the length of John’s neck where his scent is the strongest and the most pure.

 _“Oh, oh,”_  John gasps, and Sherlock grows bolder, sinking his teeth into the sensitive skin at the hinge of John's jaw, and when John cries out and begins to thrash Sherlock uses a hand to hold his hip in place and keep him still.

“Hush, John,” he murmurs, slotting their bodies together so that they’re touching along every point of themselves. “Hush now. I’m here. I know what you need.”

John’s head rolls. “Sherlock…”

Slowly, Sherlock shifts his hand from John’s hip to his groin. In the dream's hazy simplicity, his long fingers make instant work of the fastenings of John’s trousers, easily navigating their way through the layers of clothing. When at last he closes his hand around John’s hardened cock, Sherlock discovers it is slick and hot, like an omega in heat.

“Touch me, John,” he rumbles, beginning to work his hand up and down John’s length. “I want you to touch me as I touch you.” Around them, the flames continue to dance and the crowd presses in, watching with greedy, longing eyes. The air crackles with the electricity of ravenous desire.

John hums, sweeping one of his arms draped across Sherlock’s back to begin palming the space between Sherlock’s legs. Again, their clothing poses no imposition, and soon enough John takes Sherlock in hand, delivering just the right pressure and speed to make Sherlock moan into the damp patch of skin at John’s neck he’s still suckling. Overwhelmed, he drags his mouth upwards to catch John’s in a fierce kiss.

“Tell me you’re mine,” Sherlock gasps, pulling away. Their hands are still working one another to the brink; John’s legs are wrapped tightly around Sherlock’s back. Everything Sherlock can feel is John. “Please,” he says, moved to begging by sheer desperation. “Please say it. You’re mine, John. All mine. Tell me you’re mine.”

John’s hand closes tighter around Sherlock’s cock. Sherlock can feel the base of it swell against John’s palm as his knot begins to expand, and he clutches to John tighter; he knows he will climax soon. “Please, John,” he begs again, and, just as the temperature of the fire flares to a fevered pitch, John raises himself up to press his lips to Sherlock’s ear and says a single word, echoed a thousand times around them by every whorl of flame:

 _“Yours.”_  

Sherlock’s eyes fly open. He’s breathing rapidly, gasping for air, and for a moment he cannot figure out where he is, until at last he pieces together that he’s lying in his bed, smothered in the darkness of early morning night. He’s also burning up; his chest and neck are drenched with sweat and he can feel the hair plastered to his temples. Though he’s not usually one prone to tossing and turning, he has at some point in his sleep flipped to his stomach, and is now curled around a gathering of bedclothes that have been twisted into a large knot by his movements. It dawns on him that he has been rutting against his sheets in his sleep. 

For a moment Sherlock is too shocked to move. Soon, though, he gathers the courage to slip a tentative hand—his left, still unbandaged after the shower—to his groin.

His erection has returned. With the points of his fingers Sherlock traces its outline along his belly, where it sits fully formed and hot against his skin. When he reaches the head, he finds it dripping; smearing his thumb through the fluid causes his hips to stutter forward and tears a whine from the back of his throat. But the touch also unfurls an old familiar hunger within him, and Sherlock gasps when he recognizes it, suddenly afraid. Slowly, he works his fingers down from the tip of his cock to the base, hoping against hope that what he’s looking for won’t be there.

It is.   

Sherlock squeezes his eyes shut. “Please no,” he whispers, but there’s no denying the presence of the subtly engorged flesh at the base of his cock—the beginnings of what will eventually become his knot. He can’t even stop touching it, now that he’s begun; just a gentle stroking with his fingertips has already stoked within him an almost uncontrollable urge to take himself in hand, but the moment he does so a sharp, needle-like pain rockets from his palm through his arm and he hisses and lets go, remembering his burns.   

Whimpering in frustration, Sherlock finds his only solution is to resume the course of action his body had taken in sleep. Too bleary with exhaustion to feel shame enough to stop, he gathers the sheets back against his body and pistons his hips into the fabric. It feels glorious, but it’s not enough, so in the next movement he rolls himself onto his elbows and begins thrusting into the blankets from above. Pleasure splits itself open and swells to bursting in his gut.

Sherlock knows he will not last long. Pressure is building within him at an exponential rate, and as it was in the dream he can feel his body tensing, gearing up for release. Desperately, he wishes he were not alone, wishes for hands, a mouth, a body against his.

“John,” he moans, dipping his forehead against the mattress, because of course it is only ever John that Sherlock wants at times like these, and he remembers the way that John had clung to him in his dream, and touched him, and kissed him, and whispered  _“Yours”_ in his ear.

Sherlock climaxes with a broken shout. The intensity of the moment is so great it overpowers him, scattering his consciousness in the bright white flash that erupts behind the backs of his eyes. He comes harder than he has in years, and  _keeps_  coming, spilling onto his sheets until it is nearly painful and he is gasping open-mouthed with relief.

At last he collapses boneless against the bed, spent. Weakly, he pushes all the bedclothes away from his body, leaving him naked and panting into the humid blackness of his room. His throat feels raw, his every muscle sore, his burns throb in time with his pulse. He feels disgusted, manipulated by his body. His last thought before sleep claims him is of John, sleeping soundly in some distant hospital room with Mary at his side, filling his chest with sorrow and jealous ire. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, everyone, and a have a happy new year!


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